Apples Up On Top {counting activity}

While learning about apples this week, one of my students brought in the book Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss. As I was reading it, I was thinking of an activity we could do to go along with it. So on my lunch break I photocopied a few of the pages.

Then I taped them to a window to make them easier to trace. I traced 4 of the animals and put two on each page. The kids colored the animals first,

and then used a Colorations dot marker (smaller than the Do-a-Dot markers) to makes apples on the animals' heads.

The reason I left so much room at the top of the page was because I was planning on using corks dipped in paint to make the apples. But the corks were too big and these dot markers were the perfect size. But that left SO much room that some of the kids went crazy and put a whole lotta apples up on top! I told them they could make as many as they wanted, as long as they were able to count them! If they had trouble writing their numbers, I did a quick dot-to-dot for them to trace.

If I had to do it again, I think I would write the numbers first and the kids would have to add that number of apples. Or they could roll dice to figure out how many apples to make. That might be fun!